History Of The University Of Alabama

History of the University of Alabama: Volume One, 1818-1902.

The University of Alabama: A Guide to the Campusand Its Architecture is a richly illustrated guidebook to the architecture and development of the University of Alabama’s campus as it has evolved over the last two centuries. In 1988 the University of Alabama Press published Robert Oliver Mellown’s The University of Alabama: A Guide to the Campus, a culmination of a decade’s worth of research into both the facts and the legends surrounding the architecture, history, and traditions of the Capstone. Over twenty years later, this new guide brings to light the numerous additions, expansions, and renovations the university has undergone on its spacious grounds in Tuscaloosa. In addition to updated sections devoted to the university’s historic landmarks—such as Foster Auditorium, where “the stand in the schoolhouse door” occurred; Denny Chimes,where the handprints and footprints of famous Tide athletes are memorialized in concrete; and the Gorgas House, which with stood the destruction of Union troops at the end of the Civil War—new sections account for the acquisition of Bryce Hospital’s campus, the expansions at Bryant-Denny Stadium to accommodate the growing Crimson Tide fan base, and the burgeoning student recreation facilities, playing fields, and residential communities. Chapters are arranged into various campus tours for walking or driving—Antebellum, Victorian, Early Twentieth-Century, East Quad, West Quad, Science and Engineering Corridor, Student Life, Bryce, Medical, Southeast, Athletics, and Off Campus. Alumni, prospective students and their parents, new faculty, out-of-state visitors, and foreign dignitaries will all welcome this useful, compact, and colorful guide to one of the most beautiful campuses in the country.

Alabama State University is well known as a historically black university and for the involvement of its faculty and students in the civil rights movement. Less attention has been paid to the school's remarkable origins, having begun as the Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama, founded by nine former slaves. These men are rightly considered the progenitors of Alabama State University, as they had the drive and perseverance to face the challenges posed by a racial and political culture bent on preventing the establishment of black schools and universities. It is thanks to the actions of the Marion Nine that Alabama's rural Black Belt produces a disproportionate number of African American Ph.D. recipients, a testament to the vision of the Lincoln Normal School's founders. From Marion to Montgomery is the story of the Lincoln Normal School's transformation into the legendary Alabama State University, including the school's move to Montgomery in 1887 and evolution from Normal School to junior college to full-fledged four-year university. It's a story of visionary leadership, endless tenacity, and a true belief in the value of education.

Opening the Doors is a wide-ranging account of the University of Alabama’s 1956 and 1963 desegregation attempts, as well as the little-known story of Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s, own civil rights movement. Whereas E. Culpepper Clark’s The Schoolhouse Door remains the standard history of the University of Alabama’s desegregation, in Opening the Doors B. J. Hollars focuses on Tuscaloosa’s purposeful divide between “town” and “gown,” providing a new contextual framework for this landmark period in civil rights history. The image of George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door has long burned in American consciousness; however, just as interesting are the circumstances that led him there in the first place, a process that proved successful due to the concerted efforts of dedicated student leaders, a progressive university president, a steadfast administration, and secret negotiations between the U.S. Justice Department, the White House, and Alabama’s stubborn governor. In the months directly following Governor Wallace’s infamous stand, Tuscaloosa became home to a leader of a very different kind: twenty-eight-year-old African American reverend T. Y. Rogers, an up-and-comer in the civil rights movement, as well as the protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. After taking a post at Tuscaloosa’s First African Baptist Church, Rogers began laying the groundwork for the city’s own civil rights movement. In the summer of 1964, the struggle for equality in Tuscaloosa resulted in the integration of the city’s public facilities, a march on the county courthouse, a bloody battle between police and protesters, confrontations with the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a bus boycott, and the near-accidental-lynching of movie star Jack Palance. Relying heavily on new firsthand accounts and personal interviews, newspapers, previously classified documents, and archival research, Hollars’s in-depth reporting reveals the courage and conviction of a town, its university, and the people who call it home.